This description has been made to answer a few questions about how dial-up ISP (Internet Service Provider) subscribers may configure and use Linux.

To aid those who will connect their Linux based machines to an ISP for the first time, an attempt has been made to cover most issues encountered. This quite unavoidably will create a certain degree of overlap with other Linux Howto-documents and LDP books. Reference should be made to these documents to provide better understanding and detail.

Much of the existing documentation is targeted towards users with a certain degree of experience, and first time users will often have trouble sorting out the relevant information.

To simplify, the examples given will assume the following:

User name: dirk

Password: PrettySecret

Internet service provider: acme.xz

Email server: mail.acme.xz

News server: news.acme.xz

Name server: 193.212.1.0

Phone number: 12345678

Our dirk will be calling his machine roderick.

All references in the table above should naturally be replaced by whatever is valid for the ISP one is using. Often, just a minimum of changes will otherwise be required for users with different ISPs. I would like to be informed about what problems you encounter on this account.

No liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk.

One of many possible setups will be described. In the Linux world, there is usually a number of ways in which to accomplish things. Paragraphs containing hints to alternatives are marked by ALT: Please also note that FTP-references often will change slightly as new versions of programs arrive.

As far as I know, only programs that under certain terms may be used or evaluated for personal purposes will be described. Most of the programs will be available complete with source under GNU-like terms.